Green Tea, Grow Younger Instead of Older

Green Tea, Grow Younger Instead of Older

What’s the difference between choosing a cup of green tea over a cup of coffee? Coffee, falls on the acid side of the pH spectrum, while green tea is an alkaline drink. The first consequence of this important difference between the two drinks, aside of the obvious effect of acidifying or alkalizing your body, is what they make you crave for afterward. Acid foods have the effect of making us crave more acid foods during the day. But the good news is alkaline foods have the opposite effect, they help us crave other alkaline foods, and improve our eating habits over time.

Green Tea is well known for it’s many health benefits, which include boosting our immune system, allowing us to better prevent disease, improving our eye and skin health, among many others. Now a study has found that it also has a very positive effect in the way we age. And this may catch your attention!! Acidic drinks dehydrate our skin and accelerate our aging process, but read what alkaline drinks like green tea can do for us as we age:

Elderly adults who regularly drink green tea may stay more agile and independent than their peers over time, according to a Japanese study that covered thousands of people.

Green tea contains antioxidant chemicals that may help ward off the cell damage that can lead to disease. Researchers have been studying green tea’s effect on everything from cholesterol to the risk of certain cancers, with mixed results so far.For the new study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers decided to examine the question of whether green tea drinkers have a lower risk of frailty and disability as they grow older.

Yasutake Tomata of the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine and his colleagues followed nearly 14,000 adults aged 65 or older for three years.

They found those who drank the most green tea were the least likely to develop “functional disability,” or problems with daily activities or basic needs, such as dressing or bathing.

Specifically, almost 13 percent of adults who drank less than a cup of green tea per day became functionally disabled, compared with just over 7 percent of people who drank at least five cups a day.

“Green tea consumption is significantly associated with a lower risk of incident functional disability, even after adjustment for possible confounding factors,” Tomata and his colleagues wrote.

The study did not prove that green tea alone kept people spry as they grew older.

Green-tea lovers generally had healthier diets, including more fish, vegetables and fruit, as well as more education, lower smoking rates, fewer heart attacks and strokes, and greater mental sharpness.

They also tended to be more socially active and have more friends and family to rely on.

But even with those factors accounted for, green tea itself was tied to a lower disability risk, the researchers said.

People who drank at least five cups a day were one-third less likely to develop disabilities than those who had less than a cup per day. Those people who averaged three or four cups a day had a 25 percent lower risk.

Although it’s not clear how green tea might offer a buffer against disability, Tomata’s team did note that one recent study found green tea extracts seem to boost leg muscle strength in older women.

While green tea and its extracts are considered safe in small amounts, they do contain caffeine and small amounts of vitamin K, which means it could interfere with drugs that prevent blood clotting.

The study findings are an invitation to reconsider our drink choices through the day.

We all want to stay younger, and people are always looking for ways to do so. A great book I read last year was Younger Next Year, and they have very very interesting information on how to “grow younger” I recommend you look into it. And for now your drink for your next meeting may be a step in the right direction.

If you drink several cups of coffee a day, start by replacing one of them for green tea, soon enough it will be two, and more. I always suggest you ramp it up, and do small increasing changes, which are easier to do and more sustainable over time.